Who's selling books?

Publishers continue to worry about the threat of e-books taking over more and more of the book market, but so far that hasn't happened. According to Bowker, the company that tracks book publishing and sales, e-books accounted for only about 2 percent of books sold last year. This percentage will probably rise as more people buy Kindles and other e-book platforms, but there's still a lot of life left in print. One question teachers and librarians might ask is whether they will be influencing the book buying choices of young people by getting them used to e-books. If textbooks become digital, will children and teens learn that the natural place to read a book is online? That's what publishers fear, because it cuts into their profit margin, but only time will show us what the future holds. Meanwhile the big bookstores are holding their lead as the places most Americans buy books, but online sales now form 20 percent of all sales and that's likely to increase. The businesses that are losing out, to no one's surprise, are the independent bookstores, which now handle only 5 percent of sales. It's unlikely many small bookstores will be around in another five or ten years. They will be missed.